


Over Dinner

by LaFlashdrive



Series: Retrograde [2]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 17:59:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2661239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaFlashdrive/pseuds/LaFlashdrive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What do you shift into?” he asked out of curiosity.</p><p>“Same thing you are,” she replied.</p><p>“A rat?”</p><p>“No. A big pussy.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over Dinner

She forgot how much she missed the stars.

Coffins weren’t exactly full of them, and Paris had too many lights for the cosmos to be visible even at night. She hadn’t seen more than the sun in seventy or eight or ninety or however many years it had been now and she made a habit of avoiding that certain star in particular.

Clear nights were the only thing that had ever made her miss the Austrian countryside. That was the only reason she was happy in this moment. Maman had found her, had dragged her back to Styria against her will. She didn’t want to be here again. But at least she wasn’t in the coffin, she decided. And at least she was able to look at the stars. 

She was on the rooftop of their manor, their remote home in the middle of nowhere that saw less use than it should have. Mother only visited when she was running or hiding or just needed to get away. She had planned one of those “family vacations” as soon as Carmilla came back. She said they needed to bond again, become reacquainted with one another. Carmilla knew it was a ploy, knew their retreat meant mother would spell out the new rules of their game and keep Carmilla away from colleagues who did not think she had a daughter in this generation. It was all about control. About responsibilities and not the freedom from them.

Carmilla wasn’t allowed to leave the house. That was why she had only gone as far as the roof. There was nowhere else in the country side to escape to anyway. That was an also an intentional aspect of Maman’s plan. The roof was Carmilla’s only place to find solace, to find solitude.

“I brought dinner.”

Ah, yes. Dinner. This was part of Mother’s plan that Carmilla hadn’t expected when her matriarch discovered her in France. This awkward, lanky new thing she was supposed to call her brother. They had known each other all but a few days. Now he was trying to feed her.

He was still sloppy, hadn’t quite mastered the art of luring in his prey. He killed messily, violently, like a human psychopath instead of a calculating hunter. With more exertion than should have been necessary, he hoisted the body of a butchered young woman up onto the roof beside Carmilla. His own thin torso soon followed.

This boy, this William he went by, whether that was his real name or one chosen for him to cycle by Maman, had no manners, Carmilla had already realized. He possessed no grace. No elegance. No table etiquette. He lowered himself onto the shingled incline and bit at the slit of the woman’s throat with no thought given to the fact that he was in the company of a royal, of an elite.

This century was barbaric.

She tried to ignore him, tried to look at the stars, but she forgot that William was an infant, needed constant attention or else he’d cry or scream or be unable to feed himself, apparently.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

Carmilla looked toward the body with disgust. Some plain peasant girl. William clearly had attacked for proximity, not for quality. This girl was equivalent to fast food, which Carmilla still refused to taste, no matter how hungry she became. Processed meat was not one of the newfound glories of this century.

“I can feed myself,” she declined.

William did not know what the word ‘no’ meant. He lived a pampered life at his beck and call as Maman’s youngest. She had only been home days, but Carmilla could already tell that Mother was treating him better than she had ever treated her. She was babying him, though, spoiling him. Carmilla was glad she had been given the autonomy and independence her mother could no longer afford to dole upon her fledglings. She did not want to be William. Did not even want to be his sister.

He nudged the corpse toward her like they were lions sharing a communal feast on the grounds of the savannah. Carmilla shifted away from both him and the girl.

Will wasn’t sure how to oppose a second rejection. Confusion warped his innocent features for the briefest of moments before he allowed himself to duck his head back beneath the cover of the woman’s hair and continue to feed despite Carmilla’s insolence.

Will was so loud when he ate, slurped with an uncaring primal boisterousness that Carmilla wouldn’t have been able to tune out if she’d stuck her fingers in her ears. She tried to turn off her vampire senses, to dull her heightened hearing, but no matter what she couldn’t erase the sound of the slosh of blood from neck to tongue from her mind. She could only stand it for so long.

Carmilla was disgusted. Appalled. Hungry. The frustration pent up too quickly. She caved and bent down, bit into the girl opposite her new baby brother and tried to ignore the fact that her blood tasted the same as even the highest of nobles’.

Will seemed startled to suddenly give away a portion of his meal, even though he’d offered it to her beforehand, caught it with the intention of sharing. He pulled away for a moment, watched Carmilla drink and tried to figure out (unsuccessfully) why she’d inexplicably changed her mind. He chalked it up to himself, to his own generosity, then reached out a hand and stroked the back of Carmilla’s neck.

Carmilla swatted him away, dulling none of her vampiric sense to whip her head around and growl at him, expose fangs in possessive aggression. Every aspect of the moment conveyed the message to William: Carmilla’s body was her own territory and Will was not allowed to encroach on it without permission.

The speed of the impact, the contact of her black nails on the back of his palm, drew blood. The wound healed in seconds, but the memory of the pain lingered much longer.

He got the idea.

Sort of.

Will tried to act like nothing had happened, like he hadn’t been knocked down lower than he already was (and he was already the lowest on the totem pole in their hierarchy). He tried to go back to feeding, to drown his embarrassment in blood, but Carmilla was feeling vindictive now, wasn’t going to let him think such actions could be excused so easily. When he went back to the corpse, she dragged it away from him entirely, hoarded it for herself. She rested the girl against the smoke stack, fed with the smog of curling fumes above her.

Will didn’t know what to do with himself, sat in one spot with his hands in his lap like a child in time out. He licked his lips and looked down, waited. The tiling of the roof was more interesting to him than the stars, and that attitude made Carmilla loathe him even more. When Carmilla turned around to see what her brother was doing, he had not moved an inch. Carmilla laughed.

“You’re a sorry excuse for a vampire, kid.”

William looked to her, knees hugged tightly to his chest. He was more irritated than humiliated now. “Excuse me for trying to get on your good side.”

“I don’t have one, Rat Boy.”

Will had been in animal form when they’d met. He was nothing more than a dirty brown rat with eyes that weren’t even red, and it hadn’t exactly left a great first impression on Carmilla when he’d scurried into the drawing room on mother’s commands for him to greet her. Carmilla had wanted to change into her feline form and eat him right then, chase him around just for kicks. She wouldn’t be surprised if Will had been a rat in his first life, had died trying to steal a slice of cheese off a mouse trap in the manor and been resurrected by Mother and given a human form out of pity.

Will shrugged off the insult like he was proud of the title.

“What do you shift into?” he asked out of curiosity.

“Same thing you are,” she replied.

“A rat?”

“No. A big pussy.”

Carmilla could see the muscle in Will’s jaw bulge, tighten. That comment did not sit well with him, yet Will had no way to vent his frustrations, no way to retaliate without snapping back at one of his elders and he had been specifically trained over the last few years never to even dare think to do that. Carmilla obtained great joy in watching him seethe, but she felt bad for him, too. He was only a child after all. In a moment of generosity, she gathered the body of the girl by the chimney and handed it to him, rested the girl’s head in his lap so that he could feed again.

Apparently, Will didn’t want the blood and didn’t appreciate the gesture. He tossed the girls’ body off the roof much more fluidly than he’d launched her upon it. The young vampire did not flinch when her neck snapped against the ground. Carmilla didn’t either.

“Well, well. Maybe there’s a little fight in you after all, kid. Why didn’t you try to do that to me instead?” 

Carmilla saw a flash of something dark in his eye. It wasn’t black, was not even gray, but some kind of metallic silver instead. The white in him had been stained the color of chrome, no doubt the result of Mother breeding him for industry, raising him to be her little factory worker. Carmilla suspected that spark would darken over time, cake itself in soot and ash. The darkness wasn’t there yet, but it would get there. Eventually.

“You’re older than me,” he excused, fists clenched tight and lips pursed even tighter. Mother had raised him to obey and he always did, but William had the respect for authority of a toddler, Carmilla realized. But even though the smallest things could set him off, Will was still entirely dependent on someone to take care of him. He could not fight back. He could not survive if Mother kicked him out on the streets. It forced him to hold back his temper tantrum, at least this time. Carmilla milked that for all it was worth.

“I sure am, Willy Boy. And don’t you forget it, either.”


End file.
